Ducasse Gets His Three Stars; a British Tribute to Maze

Alain Ducasse’s war to win New York seems to be working: Frank Bruni gives Adour three stars, calling it a “qualified victory. It’s not through-and-through rapturous, but it’s first-rate.” [NYT]
Related: L’Obsession [NYM]

Maze by Gordon Ramsay comes in for a thoroughgoing appreciation by Bloomberg’s Richard Vines, a Brit who knows Ramsay’s restaurants the way New Yorkers know Mario Batali’s. [Bloomberg]

Jay Cheshes sees in Elettaria a checklist of downtown tropes — mustachioed bartenders, swank design, of-the-moment ingredients — but it’s lacking somewhat in the way the food is conceived and executed, in a three- (of six) star review. [TONY]

Alan Richman loves Terroir, both for its brilliant wine program and for the legions of girls there: “The few guys who have discovered this place don’t appear particularly suave, leaving plenty of opportunities for the rest of us.” Ew. [GQ]

Peter Meehan is an arepas man through and through, so his love letter to Shachis in Williamsburg is definitely a ringing endorsement, even among fellow arepa people. [NYT]

The Greek-Turkish Agnanti in Bay Ridge was too historically interesting for Sietsema to pass up, but the only thing that seems to have stood out there was the stewed rooster. [VV]

The room is lame, and a few of the mains off, but Paul Adams is clearly turned on by the food at Olana, in the best review the restaurant has gotten yet. [NYS]

Allen & Delancey had pretty much come out of the review cycle unscathed — until Lauren Collins’s review, this week, which finds the food merely competent and indistinct. She loves the room, though, like everybody else. [NYer]